While it was already known that Windows 8 would feature heavy Windows Live cloud integration, the actual extent of that integration will likely continue to take shape as development progresses on the upcoming OS. One more aspect has now been uncovered, thanks to Windows 8 enthusiasts over at My Digital Life: Windows 8 will support roaming profiles when linked to your Windows Live account. Roaming profiles have been an enterprise feature of Windows since the days of NT.

As you can see, all the personalization bases are covered — from your wallpaper and Aero Glass settings to stored credentials and Explorer and taskbar preferences. Application data can be included as well, which has me particularly excited. It’s cool enough to be able to sync my browser profiles, but it would be better still to have my Microsoft Office, Photoshop, and other applications’ preferences running seamlessly in step across all my Windows systems.

Blogger and developer Long Zheng muses that the application settings option may only apply to programs that utilize the AppX packaging method which will arrive with Windows 8. If Microsoft is utilizing existing services like SkyDrive and Live Mesh as a backend for profile roaming, however, there’s no reason it couldn’t handle pushing all of your application data to the cloud. The 25GB free storage is plenty of space — my Windows 7 AppData folder only contains 3.85GB — so it’s certainly doable.

It’s also interesting to note that Windows 8 will include some new network awareness features, like the ability to tell when your cellular data connection may be subject to roaming charges.

Reader Comments

FreeYourMind

The cloud is not your friend. This is one more step towards dangerous exposure of end user data. There is no good reason to trust your profile or data to a giant, nebulous, undefined location such as this. For all you know, your profile could be getting stored in China one day, and India the next. How safe does that feel?
Resist the rising reign of the cloud. Demand your data stay home.